They went on and soon met Kana′tĭ, who seemed much surprised to see them, and said, “What!
are you here again?” “O, yes, we never give up.
We are great men!” “What did the cannibals do to you?” “We met them and they brought us to their townhouse, but they never hurt us.” Kana′tĭ said nothing more, and they went on.
* * * He soon got out of sight of the boys, but they kept on until they came to the end of the world, where the sun comes out.
The sky was just coming down when they got there, but they waited until it went up again, and then they went through and climbed up on the other side.
There they found Kana′tĭ and Selu sitting together.
The old folk received them kindly and were glad to see them, telling them they might stay there a while, but then they must go to live where the sun goes down.
The boys stayed with their parents seven days and then went on toward the Darkening land, where they are now.
We call them Anisga′ya Tsunsdi′ (The Little Men), and when they talk to each other we hear low rolling thunder in the west.
After Kana′tĭ’s boys had let the deer out from the cave where their father used to keep them, the hunters tramped about in the woods for a long time without finding any game, so that the people were very hungry.
At last they heard that the Thunder Boys were now living in the far west, beyond the sun door, and that if they were sent for they could bring back the game.
So they sent messengers for them, and the boys came and sat down in the middle of the townhouse and began to sing.
At the first song there was a roaring sound like a strong wind in the northwest, and it grew louder and nearer as the boys sang on, until at the seventh song a whole herd of deer, led by a large buck, came out from the woods.
The boys had told the people to be ready with their bows and arrows, and when the song was ended and all the deer were close around the townhouse, the hunters shot into them and killed as many as they needed before the herd could get back into the timber.
Then the Thunder Boys went back to the Darkening land, but before they left they taught the people the seven songs with which to call up the deer.
It all happened so long ago that the songs are now forgotten—all but two, which the hunters still sing whenever they go after deer.
WAHNENAUHI VERSION After the world had been brought up from under the water, “They then made a man and a woman and led them around the edge of the island.
On arriving at the starting place they planted some corn, and then told the man and woman to go around the way they had been led.
This they did, and on returning they found the corn up and growing nicely.
They were then told to continue the circuit.
Each trip consumed more time.
At last the corn was ripe and ready for use.” Another story is told of how sin came into the world.
A man and a woman reared a large family of children in comfort and plenty, with very little trouble about providing food for them.
Every morning the father went forth and very soon returned bringing with him a deer, or a turkey, or some other animal or fowl.
At the same time the mother went out and soon returned with a large basket filled with ears of corn which she shelled and pounded in a mortar, thus making meal for bread.
When the children grew up, seeing with what apparent ease food was provided for them, they talked to each other about it, wondering that they never saw such things as their parents brought in.
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The passage is a quintessential example of animism, depicting a cosmos populated by distinct spiritual agents like Kana'ti, Selu, and the Thunder Boys who inhabit specific landscapes (the west, the woods) and interact directly with humans.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The 'Wahnenaui Version' section explicitly narrates the origin of humanity and the world's emergence from under the water, fitting the definition of a cosmogonic narrative.
The living practitioner's deliberate trance-journey into spirit, underworld, or upper realms — Lemminkainen's descent into Tuoni and Wainamoinen's entry into Wipunen's body in the Kalevala, the Siberian shaman's drum-mediated travel, Inuit angakkuq's submarine journey to Sedna, classical katabasis as ritual technique. The practitioner returns with knowledge, songs, lost-words, or a recovered soul. Distinct from psychopomp_journey (which guides the *dead* soul through afterlife realms) and from spiritual_ascent (which is the soul's *upward* return to source); shamanic_journey is the *living* practitioner crossing into ordinarily-inaccessible domains as a worked technique.
The Thunder Boys travel to the 'end of the world' and the 'Darkening land' beyond the sun door, a journey into an otherworldly realm from which they return with knowledge (songs) and benefits (game) for their community.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The Thunder Boys use specific songs to magically summon a herd of deer from the woods, demonstrating the doctrine that spoken or sung words carry direct causal power to alter reality.